Cheating
the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism

ã2003
Christopher Michael Langan

Introduction:
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

In agreeing to write this essay, I have
promised to explain why I find Darwinism unconvincing. In order to keep this
promise, I will be compelled to acknowledge the apparently paradoxical fact
that I find it convincing as well. I find it convincing because it is in
certain respects correct, and in fact tautologically so in the logical sense;
I find it unconvincing because it is based on a weak and superficial
understanding of causality and is therefore incomplete. Explaining why this is
so will require a rather deep investigation of the nature of causality. It
will also require not only that a direction of progress be indicated, but that
a new synthesis embracing the seemingly antithetical notions of teleology and
natural selection be outlined. But first, some essential background.

It would be hard to imagine
philosophical issues bearing more strongly on the human condition than the
nature of life and the meaning of human existence, and it would be hard to
imagine a scientific issue bearing more strongly on the nature and meaning of
life than biological origins. Our view of evolutionary biology, whatever it
happens to be at any particular juncture, tells us much of what we believe
about who and what we are and why we are here, unavoidably affecting how we
view (and ultimately, treat) ourselves and each other. Unfortunately, the
prevailing theory of biological origins seems to be telling us that at least
one of these questions, why
are we here?, is meaningless…or
at least this is the message that many of us, whether or not we are directly
aware of it, seem to have received. As a result, the brightest hope of the new
millennium, that we would see the dawn of a New Enlightenment in which the
Meaning of it All would at last be revealed, already seems to have gone the
way of an extravagant campaign promise at an inauguration ceremony.

The field of evolutionary biology is
currently dominated by neo-Darwinism,
a troubled marriage of convenience between post-Mendelian genetics and natural
selection, a concept propounded by the
naturalist Charles Darwin in his influential treatise On
the Origin of Species. It has often
been noted that the field and the theory appear to be inseparable; in many
respects, it seems that evolutionary biology and Darwinism originated and
evolve together, leading some to conclude that the field properly contains
nothing that is not already accommodated by the theory.

Those attempting to justify this view
frequently assert that the limitations of the theory are just the general
limitations imposed on all scientific theories by standard scientific
methodology, and that to exceed the expressive limitations of the theory is
thus to transgress the boundaries of science. Others have noted that this
seems to assume a prior justification of scientific methodology that does not
in fact exist – merely that it works for certain purposes does not imply
that it is optimal, particularly when it is evidently useless for others - and
that in any case, the putative falsifiability of neo-Darwinism distinguishes it from
any definition of science according to which the truth or falsity of such
theories can be scientifically determined. Nevertheless,
neo-Darwinism continues to claim exclusive dominion over the
"science" of evolutionary biology.

Until the latter part of the 18th
century, the story was quite different. People
tended to regard the matter of biological origins in a religious light. The
universe was widely considered to have been freely and purposively designed
and created by God as described in the Book of Genesis, and divine purpose was
thought to be immanent in nature and open to observation and study. This
doctrine, called teleology,
drew rational support from traditional theological "arguments from
design" holding that nature could only have been designed and created by
a supreme intelligence. But teleology began to wane with the rise of British
empiricism, and by the time Darwin published his theory in 1859, the winds of
change were howling his anthem. Since then, the decline of teleology has
accelerated to a point at which every supposedly universal law of nature is
confidently presented as "irrefutable evidence" that natural events
unfold independently of intent, and that purpose, divine or otherwise, is
irrelevant to natural causation.

The concept of teleology remains alive
nonetheless, having recently been granted a scientific reprieve in the form of
Intelligent
Design theory. "ID theory" holds that
the complexity of biological systems implies the involvement of empirically
detectable intelligent causes in nature. Although the roots of ID theory can
be traced back to theological arguments from design, it is explicitly
scientific rather than theological in character, and has thus been presented
on the same basis as any other scientific hypothesis awaiting scientific
confirmation.

Rather than confining itself to
theological or teleological causation, ID theory technically allows for any
kind of intelligent designer – a human being, an artificial intelligence,
even sentient aliens. This reflects the idea that intelligence is a generic
quality which leaves a signature identifiable by techniques already heavily
employed in such fields as cryptography, anthropology, forensics and computer
science. It remains only to note that while explaining the inherent complexity
of such a material designer would launch an explanatory regress that could end
only with some sort of Prime Mover, thus coming down to something very much
like teleology after all, ID theory has thus far committed itself only to
design inference. That is, it currently proposes only to explain complex
biological phenomena in terms of design, not to explain the designer itself.With regard to deeper levels
of explanation, the field remains open.

Because neo-Darwinism is held forth as a
"synthesis" of Darwinian natural selection and post-Mendelian
genetics, it is sometimes referred to as the "Modern Synthesis".
However, it appears to fall somewhat short of this title, for not only is its
basic approach to evolutionary biology no longer especially modern, but
despite the fact that it is a minority viewpoint counterbalanced by cogent and
far more popular alternatives including theistic evolution and ID theory,
it actively resists meaningful extension. Many of its most influential
proponents have dismissed ID theory virtually on sight, declaring themselves
needless of justification or remedial dialectic despite the many points raised
against them, and this is not something that the proponents of a "modern
synthesis" would ordinarily have the privilege of doing. A synthesis is
ordinarily expected to accommodate both sides of a controversy regarding its
subject matter, not just the side favored by the synthesist.

Given the dissonance of the
neo-Darwinist and teleological viewpoints, it is hardly surprising that many
modern authors and scientists regard the neo-Darwinian and teleological
theories of biological evolution as mutually irreconcilable, dwelling on their
differences and ignoring their commonalities. Each side of the debate seems
intent on pointing out the real or imagined deficiencies of the other while
resting its case on its own real or imagined virtues. This paper will take a
road less traveled, treating the opposition of these views as a problem of
reconciliation and seeking a consistent, comprehensive framework in which to
combine their strengths, decide their differences, and unite them in synergy.
To the extent that both theories can be interpreted in such a framework, any apparent points of
contradiction would be separated by context, and irreconcilable differences
thereby avoided.

The ideal reconciliatory framework would
be self-contained but comprehensive, meaning that both theories could be
truthfully interpreted within it to the maximum possible extent, and
consistent, meaning that irreconcilable differences between the theories could
not survive the interpretation process. It would also reveal any
biconditionality between the two theories; were they in any way to imply each
other, this would be made explicit. For example, were a logical extension of
neo-Darwinism to somehow yield ID-related concepts such as teleological agency
and teleological causation, these would be seen to emerge from neo-Darwinist
premises; conversely, were ID-theoretic concepts to yield ingredients of
neo-Darwinism, this too would be explicated. In any case, the result would
wear the title of "synthesis" far more credibly than neo-Darwinism
alone.